The human being is freely ‘self-determined’ rather than determined through some external authority (whether theological or teleological). This dichotomy conveniently expresses the usual understanding of modern political thought’s divergence from preceding tradition. By comparison, pre-modernity is teleological, anthropomorphic, realist; in a word, naïve – with its substantively rational nature, dictating essential ends to which we are subject. These received truths are past due for a re-examination. Just how naïve or dogmatic was the Greek understanding of freedom and nature? In this chapter, I argue that Plato’s view of man as naturally political is more complex and multivalent than our historical categorizations allow. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which, for him, politics does indeed depend upon a natural model. That model, however, is the Idea of the Good. And here, where Plato seems furthest from us, lies his greatest challenge to contemporary understandings of nature and freedom.

This chapter analyzes the Republic’s theory of the tripartite soul regarding the question of self-rule and autonomy. Only when the soul is in the ideal position of having reason positioned as sovereign ruler can a person be seen as acting autonomously. But it is not clear that when reason rules, it also motivates actions. Christine M. Korsgaard has argued that personal decision-making should be seen as analogous to political decision-making. She conceives of political decisions as a process where requests for action spring from the people, while rulers suffice to say yes or no. This chapter claims that this analysis is inadequate as a theory of how Plato portrays the relationship between the parts of the soul and of decision-making in general, and offers an alterantive interpreation in terms of what is called the Complex Model of Decision-Making.

This chapters argues that Plato’s notion of personal autonomy is closely linked to his understanding of the social dimension of rational deliberation. It begins with an assessment of Miranda Fricker’s influential account of epistemic authority and social power and raises some objections against the discursive notion of reason she develops. To substantiate these objections, it turns to Plato’s Cratylus and to Socrates’ analysis of logos as a language mediated form of rational deliberation. It argues that while Socrates suggests that the constitutive parts of language, the names (ta onomata), are ambivalent and deceptive, leaving discursive reason in doubt, Plato, at the same time, shows that it nevertheless can function to identify unwarranted claims of epistemic authority, as a form of codependent philosophical conversation. From this emerges a notion of Platonic autonomy closely tied to Plato’s analysis of the social dimension of rational deliberation and its embodiment in the Platonic dialogue.

It is natural to see in the Republic’s concern with self-mastery a Platonic account of autonomy. But Plato’s understanding of self-rule in the Republic has more to do with cognition, and rather less to do with independent agency. Indeed, in the ethically motivated epistemology of the Republic, it is aiming at ideal knowledge that transforms one ethically and engenders many of the features centrally associated with the notion of ‘autonomy’. Being able to explain reality independently makes one independent of the illusions and confusions caused by pleasure, pains, and public pressures, and even restructures the desires, pleasures and other affects liable to arise. Moreover, the ability to give accounts is what makes us accountable to one another for our cognitive condition — and for the judgements, feelings and actions based on this.

Chapter Five was devoted to the metaphysics that underpins the Stoic theories of everlasting recurrence. The present chapter focusses on three of these theories in some detail. At least two of them, as I explain in section 6, are early Stoic. As we shall see, one is stronger than the other two, and the two weaker theories are revisions of it. A central component of this chapter is the thesis of Identity, according to which there must be a full type-identity between the events of any two cosmic cycles. Why should this thesis be true? Why could not the events be slightly, or even completely, different? Thus, sections 1 and 2 describe the three theories and how exactly they differ from one another. In sections 3 and 4 are devoted to the argument for Identity. The argument is based on the nature of the Stoic god. It is his full rationality that requires that the token-events of each new cosmos be fully type identical to those of the previous one. I close the chapter in Sections 5-6 with a discussion of the two weaker theories. What are their philosophical motivations? And in what order did they emerge in the history of Stoicism?

By way of conclusion, this chapter deals with two issues that are deeply connected to the argument of the book but that I shall leave open. The first one is Chrysippus’ own answer to question of why the Stoic god would want the conflagration if the new cosmos is identical to the old one and no improvement is possible. The second issue is when the Stoic god designs the cosmos if the series of cosmic cycle is beginningless and changeless. This second issue is related to the larger topic of cosmic creation and the link between the Stoic and the Christian god. Thus, it is of more general interest and may help to put the argument of the book in a wider historical perspective.

The chapter studies this mechanism in detail and focusses on the following questions. First, what are these ‘exhalations’ (ἀναθυμιάσεις) and why do they rise up in the sky? Secondly, why does the desiccation of the sublunary region cause celestial fire to descend to this region? More particularly, why does not celestial fire consume the sublunary region before it totally dries out, as an ordinary wildfire would consume a forest that is still relatively green and full of life? Thirdly, how does celestial fire consume the exhalations and the substances that it finds in the sublunary region? And, more generally, how do the Stoics conceive of the physical process by which a mass of fire consumes another body? In other words, how do they envision the phenomenon of combustion? Fourthly, what is the place of the concept of combustion in their elemental theory? And, finally, how long does the conflagration last?

The early Stoic cosmos is sharply different from that of Plato and Aristotle. But it is also unique compared to that of the Presocratics. In this chapter, I seek to prove that this is so by concentrating upon the Stoic theory of conflagration we just examined. The issue requires an in-depth discussion because Stoic cosmology owes enormously to the Presocratics, and the theory of conflagration is clearly the part of Stoic cosmology that has deeper roots in these early thinkers, much more so than the theories of cosmogony and everlasting recurrence

The conflagration is followed by a cosmony that restores the cosmos. In fact, a permanent end would be impossible given the rationality of the early Stoic god. In this chapter, I limit myself to asking what is the structure of the cosmogony. How, exactly, is the large mass of fire left by the conflagration transformed in the cosmogony into the differentiated masses of air, fire, water and earth that constitute the present cosmos? I shall argue that the cosmogony, which sets off as soon as the conflagration is over, divides into at least three basic stages: (a) the formation of the four elements and of the sublunary and supralunary regions as two differentiated parts of the cosmos, (b) the formation of composite homogeneous substances (gold, flesh, wood, etc.) out of the four elements; and (c) the formation of composite heterogeneous substances (animals and plants) out of homogeneous ones.

This chapter and the next build upon the previous chapters by addressing a vital question that they leave open. What is the relation between the cosmos issued from the cosmogony and the cosmos previously destroyed at the conflagration? Is it the same cosmos? Or is it different? The issue of identity drove a great deal of dispute within the school. In fact, as I explain in Chapter Six, there were three clearly different Stoic theories of everlasting recurrence that opposed one another on this question. In the present chapter, I concentrate upon two broader and more basic metaphysical problems presupposed in the dispute over identity. The two problems, concisely put, are the following. (a) Why is the present cosmos present as opposed to past or future? In general, how is the present distinct from the past and the future? (b) Supposing that the present cosmos is type-identical to the previous one and the next how can they really occupy different places in time? And how can the times themselves be distinct if the events are type-identical?

In this introduction, I start with a brief description of the structure of the Stoic cosmos that explains how it differs from other cosmic systems in Antiquity. I then describe the main goal of the book and some of the general methodological principles that I follow. Finally, I offer a synopsis of the argument that unifies it.

This chapter brings together the theory of conflagration and the theories of everlasting recurrence that embrace Identity, and draws a paradox from their combination: the ‘paradox of destruction and restoration’. If the new cosmos is wholly type-identical to the old one, would it not be more rational for the Stoic god not to destroy the latter in the first place? The idea of a conflagration followed by the restoration of a type-identical cosmos seems to threaten the rationality of the Stoic god. In this chapter, I explain how, on my view, the Stoic god is immune to this objection.

To present some of the basic notions that will be used throughout the book, this chapter offers an analysis of the Stoic cosmos that complements the brief description given in the Introduction. I start by looking at its internal structure and composition, the distinction between the sublunary and the supralunary regions, the way in which they interact with each other, and the distribution of the four elements in the sublunary region and their reciprocal change. Subsequently, I discuss the place of god in the cosmos and, in particular, the pantheistic idea that god is one of the two basic cosmic principles as well as the thesis that the cosmos is a living being whose ‘seminal reason’ (σπερματικὸς λόγος) is god. Finally, I present ‘theological determinism’, the deterministic conception of the cosmos that the early Stoics advocate and that is prevalent in their theory of everlasting recurrence.

The chapter outlines the long history of the maker’s knowledge tradition from Hippocrates to Vico. It explores five specific paradigmatic moments during which the fundamental intertwinement between making and knowing was problematised. First, it addresses the Hippocratic cogitations on the nature of knowledge as a practical and theoretical activity. Second, it engages with Plato and Aristotle’s desperate attempts to purify episteme from any practical concerns. Third, it follows the transformation of the concept of episteme in the post-Aristotelian debates on the so-called stochastic arts. Fourth, it explores how the very concept of ‘knowledge by making and doing’ is gradually concocted in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Finally, it shows how the idea of knowing by making is gradually integrated into the epistemology of modern science and history since Giordano Bruno.

This first chapter in the series of three turns to one – if not the – foundational Islamic philosopher, al-Fārābī, and his use and conception of fiṭra. His engagement is marked by an interest in logic and politics and would influence the philosophical engagements with fiṭra for generations. More specifically, the author shows how al-Fārābī invokes fiṭra to convey fundamental insights about human nature and society learned from his engagement with Greek philosophy, including his adaptations of Aristotle’s logic and Plato’s political vision, to an Arabic-speaking and potentially Islamic audience. By using fiṭra, rather than ‘nature’ or physis (ṭabʿ and/or ṭabīʿā ) at certain points, al-Fārābī is able to keep an implied connection to the creator God. Fiṭra, then, was not only a convenient term for communicating ideas about virtue, logic, and politics drawn from Greek thought to Arabic-speaking audiences; al-Fārābī’s use of the term also points to what might be “Islamic” about his apparently “Greek” philosophy.

Explores two instances early in the Metamorphoses where chaos exerts itself on the formed world, namely the climate crises triggered by the flood and Phaethon narratives. These narratives frequently occur as a pair in philosophical discourses, where conflagrations and floods are seen as part of a regular cosmic cycle, whereby the world moves between phases of increasing and decreasing entropy, such as in the Stoic theory of the Great Year or in Empedocles’ cosmogony. In such cases, the Phaethon and flood narratives are seen as myths that can be mined for evidence of a ‘true’ scientific doctrine. In the Metamorphoses, however, the narratives of Phaethon and the flood do not indicate a stable cycle but rather are expressions of a world continually veering towards a chaotic collapse. This becomes evident when reading these narratives through the cosmic theories of Empedocles, Plato, and Lucretius.

Identifies the similarities and differences between the various worldviews generated across Ovid’s works, with particular attention given to the beginning of the Fasti. Here Janus presents an alternative vision of how the world came to be through his evolution from primordial chaos. In encouraging us to explore the correspondences and divergences between his different cosmogonies, Ovid introduces a further level of instability into the world and text alike. Ovid also continues to combine allusions to conflicting cosmogonies, with Empedocles and the myth of Statesman from Plato’s Politicus operating as important intertexts for Fasti 1. In the Politicus, Plato parodies and subverts Empedocles’ cosmic system so as to question the parameters of natural philosophy and the approaches of the Presocratics. In the Politicus natural philosophy is seen as largely dependent upon myth to provide an oblique vision of phases in the history of the cosmos that have fallen away from collective human consciousness.

Shifts focus to the most extensive and contentious passage of natural philosophy in the Ovidian corpus, the Speech of Pythagoras from book 15 of the Metamorphoses. Ovid’s representation of the transmigration of souls has a number of important precedents in Plato’s dialogues, including that from the end of the Timaeus. Recollection forms an important component of the theories of transmigration from the dialogues, with the soul’s access to wisdom being the result of its ability to remember the knowledge that it gained when travelling beyond its incarnate existence. For Ovid’s Pythagoras, however, there is no eternal world beyond that of embodied existence, with the ability to remember past lives being as much a form of intertextual recollection as a precise philosophical theory. The Speech of Pythagoras provides a further opportunity for Ovid to underscore the fluid ontologies of the Metamorphoses, while disturbing the notion of metamorphosis as a unifying principle for the text. The illusion of a regular cycle of transmigration governing the lives and afterlives of the soul is disrupted by the inability for such a cycle to ever be fully integrated with the accounts of metamorphoses that precede it.